Watercooling a ATC-201

This is an old school case from the days of thick aluminium, small fans and emptying your wallet to afford the bleedin thing when it came out.

So to begin I had an old 1fan Radiator waterchill watercooling kit that some may recognise It had been sitting around for ages not being used cos I was too chicken/lazy to play with watercooling.

So I stripped down the 201


And started taping it up ready for cutting:


I had planned to put the rad in the roof because, well there isn't anywhere else to put it on these things without really hacking into them, remember these are the 80mm fan years.

Anyway after removing the fan and mesh from the blowhole in the top I found I had to cut these little lugs off that it had all been screwed into, so I said fairwell to a few dremel disks and got to work.



Here she is upside down with a couple of those pesky lugs cut off.

So next outline the grill on the masking tape and drill a couple of pilot holes to get started:
(Note check the thickness of the Aluminium


Holes have to be big enough for the hacksaw


A few holes later and we are ready to cut!


Just after cutting and removing the masking tape (remembed to do the holes for the screws):

Luckily my wife is a jewler so she has lots of nice files to get rid of those nasty edges


Like these (ouch)


Finished filing, test fitting rad, fan and grill


Another view of the positon of the radiator:

Now we get into the plumbing bits

I do like these XSPC blocks they are mighty fine


Gigabyte P35-DS3R fitted to removable tray with block bolts fitted.


Leak testing, check out the old-skool waterchill pump!!


Here is when I lost the plot a bit and decided the 120x1 size radiator just wasn't going to cut the mustard.

Plus when testing the supplied 120mm fan it was a wee bit noisy.

So got me a 240mm Swiftech radiator and Xilence fans!! yeehar!

Obviously the hole needed a little bit of extra expansion


Bit of a cable tidy, tuck the pump and res away a bit and we are done!


Mmmm.. red and black...


All done ready for action.


As someone said in an earlier thread these classic CM cases are gorgeous IMHO.
Things still to do:
Quieter 80mm fans
New fan controller
Maybe a chipset cooler if the rad can take it, or get a beefier 240mm rad.

Hope you enjoyed the thread.

looking very good so far nice 1

Love it Biffa

Cant wait for my ATC110 to arrive. One quick question where did you get the top fan gaurd plates from, email in trust if need be.

Wedge said:

Love it Biffa

Cant wait for my ATC110 to arrive. One quick question where did you get the top fan gaurd plates from, email in trust if need be.

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Hmm good question, I'll try and find the receipt. Its not from where I thought it would be from.

That's a beaut!

Only thing I'd do if it was mine was probably sleave all the cables and wires.

Must say I do like the look of that case a lot

Case looks awful and I think you did a bad job. Buy a new case and start again. Send that one to me and i'll dispose of it in the correct fashion. PM me for details, but bare in mind i'm not going to go out of my way to chase this up.

What way do the fans run?

Air into the rad and case, or extracting air out of the case?

what are the temps like?

N19h7m4r3 said:

That's a beaut!

Only thing I'd do if it was mine was probably sleave all the cables and wires.

Must say I do like the look of that case a lot

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Yeah my next watercooling job I did I sleeved everything. I'll revisit this one at some stage but its more of a workhorse than a showpony so no window

Tetsu said:

Case looks awful and I think you did a bad job. Buy a new case and start again. Send that one to me and i'll dispose of it in the correct fashion. PM me for details, but bare in mind i'm not going to go out of my way to chase this up.

Click to expand...

lol

fantastic work there mate. love the 201. i remember when these used to be all rage when people first started water cooling their cpu/gpu. oh how times have changed.

Tetsu said:

Case looks awful and I think you did a bad job. Buy a new case and start again. Send that one to me and i'll dispose of it in the correct fashion. PM me for details, but bare in mind i'm not going to go out of my way to chase this up.

Click to expand...

Sure, will you dispose of it humanely? *sob*

Oh and sorry.

KelticDaz said:

What way do the fans run?

Air into the rad and case, or extracting air out of the case?

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Extracting air out. air in the case isn't that hot because there isn't a high end gfx card and there are two case fans going in-out front-back.

Temp wise it sits around 58-60 with all 4 cores at 100% running a Q6600 G0 at 3.4Ghz

But this is what it looks like when the pump stopped working (loose connection)



To the left is the peak temp with no pump, then the pump starts working after I got the connection fixed and it drops down to idle temps, then you can see the load temps when BOINC kicks in.

now you need to get a pioneer dvdrw with an X09-XLS faceplate and it's complete

i want to do similar to my CM110, but can't bring myself to cut a hole in the top!

bledd. said:

now you need to get a pioneer dvdrw with an X09-XLS faceplate and it's complete

i want to do similar to my CM110, but can't bring myself to cut a hole in the top!

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Had the same emotional issues with my CM111 (poor mans 110) and S5000. In the end I hung a 120.2 rad off the back of the 111 and managed to mount a 120.3 internally into the S4000 without drilling a single hole.

Cutting up old skool ATC cases should be against the law

Oh and what's a X09-XLS faceplate? My l33t Google skilz have deserted me

To the OP - looks lovely though, nice job

Biffa said:

Sure, will you dispose of it humanely? *sob*

Oh and sorry.

Click to expand...

The times past now and i'm no longer interested in helping you. Your going to have to make the best of it.